“The Tell-Tale Heart”
1. What point of view is this story, and how does this impact the reader’s trust in the narrator?
2. What is the central conflict in this story, what’s the climax, and what’s the resolution? What does our understanding of the plot do for our understanding of larger themes we take away from the story?
3. When does the speaker reveal what he’s done and why he’s done it, and what does that ordering of information tell us about the speaker?
4.What is the most powerful image in the story, and how does that image help us further characterize the narrator?
5. How does the narrator describe, in general, his actions? How does his general way of describing his actions further characterize him? What are some specific examples that illustrate our points?
“The Cask of Amontillado”
1. How does this story start differently from the narrator’s point of view?
2. What are some ways that both of Poe’s narrators are similar in character action? In their reasoning of their actions?
3. In comparing both Poe narrators’ plots, what are some general similarities that you can see between the two?
4. What characteristic allows Fortunato to fall into Montresor’s plot, and how then are Poe’s plots similarly structured when considering other literary elements? (Setting, etc. Let’s trace the narrator’s usage across the story’s plot…)
5. How does irony operate differently in both stories?
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